Archive for March 30th, 2006

Some people say it’s good to find out what you’re good at, what you want to do and what you’re natural talents are in life. It’s also important to find out what you’re not good at, what you don’t want to do and what your natural talents are not.Maybe no one is good at dodging rubber bullets or born with lungs and eyes capable of coping with tear gas. Today I realized I’m not much cut out for war photography. When a flash bomb went off about two meters from where I was making pictures I could barely think. My fight or flight instinct when directly into flight mode. Rocks have been flying towards Israelis and bullets flying towards Palestinians for decades now. A soldier dies here and a protester dies there. It’s a “low intensity war” a German journalist was explaining to me. “It will go on for 40 years and then the Palestinians will be gone,” he said after interviewing a retired Israeli officer. What I started to think about was whether a low intensity war backed by the blind wealthy world is worth dying for, or even taking a rock across the noggin.